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Monday, November 27, 2017

My how I have abandoned this space. I have been feeling less that creative with my needlework lately and that means I have little, it anything worth sharing. I have had a few small orders in my etsy shop, so I've remade a few things, and work on the Armenian lace piece is ongoing as ever. I've done a little crocheting and some knitting and I'm still hard at work writing. I'm still muddling through the editing of my first novel and my hope is that I'll have something to share before the year is out. I'm also writing daily on at least three different projects, though there is currently much doubt as to which ones will survive to completion. I may have bit off more than I can chew on that front.

Last bit of news to share is the SALE in my etsy shop. No coupon code is needed, but you do need to spend at least $20 to activate the 20% off. It will likely be up through the holidays, but sooner is always better, especially if you want anything custom.

Tuesday, October 3, 2017

I'm getting awful neglectful here again. In my defense I have been hard at work on several different projects. I've finished the third draft of my novel and it's currently being copy-edited by my 10 year old. I know that might sound like a daft idea, but if you could see the skill this child has at finding typos, missing commas, and the like, you would be seriously impressed. Anyway, once she's done with that and I've tackled a few more details, I plan on self publishing it on Amazon. Regardless of how that goes I'm already at work on two other stories that may or may not become novels. The point is to keep writing, right?

Other than the writing, I did tackle an interesting tatted art project though I'm not at liberty to discuss the particulars of that. My part in the task is complete and now and it's up to the real artist to do the hard parts. I'm crossing my fingers that the idea works out because I think it's genuinely interesting and I really want to see it finished. I will of course share if and when I can.

The Armenian lace piece is really my fall back project. I work on this when I'm catching up on the scads of television I try to consume and while I read. This is the last image of it that I posted on all my social media places. I'm much better about updating those while the blog languishes untended. Of course that's mostly because I can post a picture across everything in a minute and here, well it's a much larger time commitment. So if you're actually missing what I'm working on and I know that's a big if, you might want to pop by my facebook page,twitter or instagram. It's generally the same things on all of them, so dealers choice.

I'm also been lucky at least the last week or so to have some orders in my etsy shop. A couple of them have included custom pieces, so I'm alternating the tatting of those with all my other projects and homeschooling the kids. I guess I really am pretty busy. I'm also pretty happy that the summer and it's subsequent expensive air conditioning bills is past us for now and crossing my fingers that these orders represent a trend for the fall. Here's hoping.

Monday, September 11, 2017

Well, I am certainly getting lazy when it comes to writing here, sorry. Things around here have gotten into a nice routine as of late. Schooling has reached a comfortable rhythm and I'm working on all sorts of random things like I picked up some large day of the dead skulls to paint for our walls. It's been slow going on those, but it's something different to do and that's what I wanted them for.

I've had a couple of small orders in the past week that have gotten me tatting a bit and of course work on the Armenian lace is ongoing and very close to hitting the 4 foot across mark. I've also been hard at work editing my novel. It is a glacially slow process though and I'm barely a third of the way through it. I missed the pure writing process so I've already started writing another thing. I'm less certain about how long this one might end up though. It could be a short story or a novel or somewhere in between. Since I achieved my first goal of simply writing a book, everything else just feels like cream at this point.

I may actually have another art tatting project soon. It's a little early to say for certain, but if it does pan out, I should have more to write about in the near future. Otherwise it's now schooling, painting, editing, writing and knotting for now.

Tuesday, August 29, 2017

I've been pretty busy lately getting ready for the beginning of the homeschooling year that started yesterday. There were of course all sorts of issues that needed to be sorted out before we started. I'm sure we'll have a few more bumps before we really get into the groove of things, but so far so good.

I've done a lot of work on the Armenian lace piece. It's just a couple of inches shy of being 4 feet across now. No, I'm not stopping anytime soon even though it's now large enough to be a bit unwieldy on my lap. I'm going for ridiculously large now.

Yesterday, I was fortunate enough to get a nice sized order that needed a few pieces made up before I could ship it. Since we're back to schooling that has to wait until after classes are wrapped which means I still have a bit more work to do on them before I can get them in the mail. There are also a couple of pieces that I will want to remake for the shop even though sales are coming maybe every other week or so at this point, save for pattern orders that are a bit more frequent.

Last bit of news is that I finished writing the first draft of the novel I've been working on much of the summer. It topped out at over 82,000 words. There's still a ton of work that I'll need to do before it sees the light of day. There's editing and proofreading and probably more editing. Since I'm back to work so to speak, it may be quite a while before I get these processes done, but for now I'm reveling in the fact that I did indeed write a book.

Tuesday, August 15, 2017

I've not got much to share this week. I've been working slowly on the Armenian lace, but most of my time has been spent reading and writing. I'm at 66,000 words now so if I keep working at the same speed I should be done with the first draft of the book by the end of the month. Of course I really have no idea where to go from that point. I made a point of not thinking beyond the actual writing of the thing, so I don't have a clue what might or might not happen with it after I edit and proofread it. I guess I'll have to do some research at that point.

That's not why I popped by though. It's my birthday, so I've set up a coupon code for a birthday sale. It looks like soon I'll be able to run a proper sale in my etsy shop as tools for that have just been released, but won't be live until next week. So for now get 25% off anything in my shop through Friday with this link: https://www.etsy.com/shop/TotusMel?coupon=BIRTHDAY25 or you can use the code BIRTHDAY25 at checkout like usual.